VoIP, Social Networking Sites, Spam and Other Cyber Attacks in 2007

As increasing number of businesses implements the 'Voice over IP' (VoIP) technology, hacking attacks around this technology will explode in 2007, says security vendor MessageLabs. As more and more companies and consumers adopt 'Internet telephony' cyber criminals will take advantage of vulnerabilities in the application and plant attacks, explains Paul Wood, 'senior analyst' at MessageLabs. According to Wood the online miscreant makes a telephone call that results in crashing of the application, infects the PC and gives the attacker access over it.

Wood says there is a probability of early forms of VoIP attacks to arise in the New Year. As people adopt 'Google Talk', 'Skype' and other 'Internet telephony applications', they will attract a greater number of spammers and malware writers. Likewise the proliferate 'instant messaging' (IM) will create a favorable environment for criminals to succeed in their operations.

In its annual intelligent report released on December 13 2006, MessageLabs predicts that there will be a surge of IM threats next year. It also warns that 'social networking sites' like 'MySpace' and 'FaceBook' will attract more of hackers because they can access information posted on the sites, making it favorable for them to operate targeted attacks.

The report also found a jump of 86 percent in the average spam level of 2006, pushed by increased sophistication of 'botnets' and 'targeted techniques'. Experts foresee a more specificity of spam in 2007. Furthermore, hackers will maintain their focus on industry sectors with the application of 'geek spam' to have huge success. The criminals will next target financial and legal professions.

Security experts also predict that 2007 will bring to its fold spam, spyware, and viruses and also an amalgamation of business communication protocols - a trend emerged in 2006.

Cyber criminals will be using more sophisticated and unbreakable technology that will make 'ransomware' and 'malicious software' more threatening. These 'badware' will encrypt files and documents with the help of a secret key. MessageLabs also expects that there will be more worms targeting the Mac OS X in the beginning of 2007. It already identifies an average of ten new worms striking every day.

» SPAMfighter News - 12/22/2006